Statement of Accounts

The Statement of Accounts is a complete record for the year of the financial activities of the Council. Downloadable versions of each year are available at the bottom of the page.

The audited accounts would normally be expected to be available from August 2019, however this year they will not be available until the end of October 2019. The reason for the delay is related to issues with the Council's External Auditor, Ernst & Young, not being able to provide the necessary staff to undertake the audit work to the expected timetable. The Council finds this very regrettable given the efforts it has made to produce its draft accounts by the required deadline of the end of July. It has expressed its concerns to the body responsible for appointing and monitoring external auditors, Public Sector Audit Appointments, that a global firm of the scale of Ernst & Young has not been able to meet the expectations of its contract in respect of the Council's audit.

Ernst & Young have commented as follows on the situation.

"The external audit of the draft statement of accounts for the year ended 31 March 2019 has not yet been completed by our external auditors, EY LLP, due to EY's resourcing pressures. This situation is allowed for by Regulation 10, paragraph (2a) of the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015. (See attached link: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/234/regulation/10/made). Therefore this notification explains, as per paragraph (2a), that we are not yet able to publish our audited 2018/19 final statement of accounts in line with deadline of 31st July 2019, as per paragraph (1). The audit committee will consider the results of the 2018/19 audit at its meeting in October 2019, after which we will publish the final audited accounts."